GAO noted that: (1) IRS met or exceeded its 1999 goals for several
performance measures, but fell short of its goals in two key areas -
taxpayers' ability to access IRS' toll-free telephone service and the
quality of IRS' responses to taxpayers tax law questions; (2) certain
features of IRS' methodology for measuring the quality of responses to
tax law questions also warranted IRS' attention; (3) the timeliness of
refunds for paper returns raised some questions about IRS' timeliness
that IRS could not answer; (4) IRS attempted to improve telephone
service in 1999, however, service did not improve, but deteriorated; (5)
GAO's work indicated this deterioration resulted from (a) unrealistic
assumptions about the implementation and impact of IRS' changes, and (b)
other problems managing staff training and scheduling and implementing
new technology; (6) IRS enhanced the availability of its walk-in
services by increasing Saturday hours and making services more
accessible to taxpayers who did not have convenient access to a walk-in
office; (7) IRS did a better job of measuring walk-in customer
satisfaction in 1999 than 1998; (8) however, IRS made little progress in
measuring the quality and timeliness of its walk-in services; (9) use of
IRS' World Wide Web site on the Internet increased significantly during
the 1999 filing season, but IRS data pointed to problems with taxpayers
getting answers to tax law questions via electronic mail; (10) IRS
stopped millions of dollars in erroneous EIC claims in 1999 by
validating social security numbers and scrutinizing certain claims; (11)
IRS implemented new procedures (called recertification) in 1999 that
require certain taxpayers to document their eligibility for the EIC
before IRS approves their claim; (12) GAO identified certain
opportunities to streamline the recertification process and thus make it
less burdensome to taxpayers and IRS; (13) IRS service centers were not
consistently following the national guidelines for recertification,
which could result in disparate treatment of taxpayers; (14) IRS
implemented several initiatives in 1999 directed at making electronic
filing paperless and thus more appealing to potential users; (15) 20
percent of the returns filed in 1999 included the new child tax credit;
(16) many of those taxpayers erred in calculating the credit amount,
while others who were eligible for the credit failed to claim it; (17)
correction of these errors increased IRS' processing workload; (18) IRS
made significant changes to the computer systems it uses to process
returns and remittances; and (19) IRS accomplished those changes without
any discernible processing disruptions.